Andy Grove, the chairman who propelled Intel into the limelight, has come up with a cunning plan for the chip giant.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Grove is suggesting to current CEO Paul Otellini that Intel starts making advanced batteries for plug in electric cars. Although Andy Grove is retired from Intel, he is still plugged into the company in an advisory capacity.

Grove may give advice, but it's not certain that Intel will take it. Apparently Intel Capital already has investments in battery companies
Intel has often flirted with apparently crazy ideas, and then decked them without any ceremony. Its research labs division often comes up with ideas which do become products, however.

Some examples,  off the top of my head, include the Intel Electron Microscope; the Intel Hotels of Distinction; the Intel MP3 music player; a graphics chip which filled a warehouse because it sold so few; a voice processing toy; processor serial numbers which were auto-switched on; Camino - a chipset which didn't really work and last, but not least the Itanium.

It was Andy Grove himself who pushed and pushed for the Itanium to see the light of day. Some of Grove's better ideas include Kicking Pat Gelsinger, owning up to the FDIV problem in the Pentium processor, and the highly cunning Intel Inside scheme.

At the height of the dot com hysteria, Paul Otellini's predecessor, Dr Craig Barrett, had the interesting notion to diversify into an area owned by telecom companies. Hardly a day would go by that Intel didn't buy one or occasionally several companies. These ambitious plans never really amounted to anything

For Intel to decide that it is going to make advanced car batteries, it would have to spend a fortune hiring the right people and building factories to make them. Right now Intel has other things on its mind than splashing out vast sums of money on a project that might never come to fruition.

Like a cobbler, Intel is now sticking to its last. X